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Paul Raven

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It stands to reason that Blake wasn't conceived to be Christina because the detail of an adult renaming themselves always bothered me.  Who does that?  Except of course for Charlotte "Raven" Alexander, William "Snapper" Foster Jr., and Jeannie "Theresa" Donovan.

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Kimmer looks good in that video..(funny she looked better in that vid then she did on the show at the time.) They dressed her horribly, it was almost an insult.  That broad was a kockout when she was younger...and she still was attractive for her age. Yes she aged and gained weight as we all do, but I always liked that Reva looked like a real, attractive person and not a scary Dee Evans..stuck in time yet looking like a waxed doll.  Reva always had a sense of style, even though it was flashy and from Rauch on they didn't know how to dress her...(pastel pant suits are so not Reva..) They needed a talented dresser who knew how to work with real women and not just anorexic actresses. I hated the Peapack years when they would put her in a t-shirt and jeans.but as someone said, Kimmer was sick of it and drinking and probably made herself look sloppier in rebellion.  Look at the last scene when they had her in makeup and that simple dress and she looked great compared to what they had her in for months.

 

Pam Long's first day back from strike was either writing the day of Maeve's death or her memorial. I thought Maeve was dull as dishwater but I HATED anything tied to Kyle and Sampson Industries...(Besides Ms. Sally,  I loved that old broad and could see her and Aunt Meta tossing back some brown drinks in GL Golden Girl style.)

And I love that when Long brought Garret back for a Christmas Episode she watched the monitor..."That women is sexy as HELL!" so she wrote Holly back in! Come to think of it, I would love to sit down with Long and a couple of drinks to hear about her time on the show.Didnt she work for Rauch on SB? I am sure that was a match made in hell!

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IIRC, there was a "Next Time on GL..." at the end of the last entirely studio-bound episode that gave viewers their first glimpse of the "new" GL, as well as a combination musical montage / soft re-introduction at the start of the first Peapack show.  But...yeah, pretty much.

 

(I think I stayed tuned until the first commercial break.  That was all I needed to know the change was a disaster.)

 

ETA: I forget which soap journalist said this, but one of 'em said the biggest mistake that Ellen Wheeler and David Kreizman had made in the Peapack transition was not kicking it off in a bigger way, either w/ something momentous occurring in the final moments of the last pre-Peapack episode, or at the end of the first Peapack one, to get viewers to stick with the new production style beyond their initial curiosity.  And yeah, I'd have to agree.

 

GL really needed to exploit the "Peapack experiment" by devising the kind of story that could show off the new prod style and prove why that kind of change was needed.  Instead, nothing of any real significance happened in the first Peapack episode, which made the whole thing look exactly like what it was: a last-ditch effort, by a dying soap, to cut costs and stay on the air.

 

 

I think it was the day of Maeve's death.  Again, IIRC, when she returned from the strike, they were so behind, and they were so busy salvaging everything that the scabs had ruined, there wasn't even any time to write a proper funeral for the character.  (Plus, the day of Maeve's death was also the very last day on Leslie Denniston's contract, so forget about giving her even deathbed scenes to play.)

 

For some reason, I'm recalling an interview Long did (maybe w/ Brandon's Buzz?) where she talked about working w/ Rauch at SB.  Early on, she said, there had been a clash of sorts between the two over...something.  However, when she confronted him, he backed down.  Apparently, Rauch was caught off-guard by the fact that Long was not the type to be steamrolled, which he had been used to doing with other writers.  (I might have confused Long and Rauch with another regime at another soap, but it definitely fits with Harding Lemay's description of Rauch as a producer who was okay to work with, "but you had to bully him.")

Edited by Khan
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There was, indeed, a montage in the first Peapack episode, albeit it was at the end of the show. It featured a series of clips, including a football game with the Coopers, Remy doing sit-ups (I think), Rick in jail, Reva, Jeffrey, Cassie, and Josh outside the lighthouse (which was suddenly in the middle of the woods). It was all set to the new theme song. The first Peapack episode was a vast improvement of the trial December 2007 episode where characters supposedly got locked in the Springfield Mall. That episode was disastrous.

 

 

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I recall my mom texting me about asking about the shaky camera work, and the weird green color.  I think the end of feb/early march was the official start of the Peapack suicide mission... but there were a few episodes before the official start where some scenes were filmed in the new style mixed with scenes filmed in the traditional style.  It was like two halves of different items being fused together and that didn't fit at all.

 

I will give credit to Long trying to figure out where the scabs were going with some of the stories.  I do think she had Josh/Reva watching little Ben while Fletcher was grieving (even was a note of sorts from India who was Maeve's good friend).  Plus, there was even a custody battle talk between Fletcher and Maeve's mom as well during Maeve's funeral.  I think it was a surprise that she was killed off so suddenly.. it wasn't expected at all.

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The suddenness of the new sets was coupled with tons of exposition about the character's placement.  E.g.; "look, we're at the hospital" (which is just one room, and less modern than last week), "now we're at Lewis Oil" (which now looks like mechanic shop), and now let's head over to Reva's (but she no longer lives at Reva-bend, she's moved into a one-room shack) - it lacked glamour.  @Khan I agree that the transition needed a plot devise so that we weren't just staring at industrial looking rooms; like if Billy Lewis bought Springfield and evicted everyone.  It was clear as a long time viewer that those 1970's European spies would be much less comfortable in the "New Springfield."

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Thanks @Khan!

 

I'm sure I've told this story before but I didn't even know other soaps than the ones on ABC existed until 1999 and GL was the first. I think my first episode was the one where Phillip and Beth were trapped on the mountain after the plane crash. Was that in San Cristobel?

 

Actually where WAS San Cristobel? The caribbean? I remember Reva drowning for an entire episode. It was weird as hell.

 

Anyway, my first impressions of the show was that everyone was blonde and it looked cheap. That never really changed.

Edited by Darn
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This happened because they had just hired Joan Collins to play Alexandra and promised Collins a delicious wardrobe. But they did give everyone else in the cast an updated look, even Lillian who was usually dressed in frumpy middle class duds when she wasn't at the hospital. But Collins was dropped in December and Rauch also left at the end of 2002. So I don't think this fashion designer stuck around very long. Under the next exec producer, John Conboy, things seemed to have been toned down. Conboy usually preferred to dress up the sets instead of the actors. Meaning Reva was back to looking like a soccer mom in 2003.

 

San Christobel was said to be a small island nation somewhere in the Caribbean. One of the plots involved the Santos family having business on the island. And the Santoses were established as being Cuban not Mexican. So we can probably assume San Christobel was not far from Cuba.

Edited by JarrodMFiresofLove
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BWHAHA, but we still got spies, and jewel thieves (that looked like Male Strippers) in this dumpy little town.

 

I remember leading up to Peapack..they would have people out and about for no reason...Alan taking a call while walking across, a park baseball field??? Whatshisface Jeffery taking a call on a park bench while someone across the street had a shaky hand and kept zooming in and out. The problem was, as a long time soap viewer...I was happy as I was sure a psycho was after Jeffie and taping him .  But no..the only psycho was Wheeler.

 

I actually was excited by the potential of the the new style but the first few minutes of the change over was a voice over from the now very sharp and brittle Ehler saying..."I am Harley Davidson Cooper and this is MY town!"  Uh, not is not! It should have been Rick or at least Reva. I knew then that not only was it the new style but it was all Cooper now and I said..Buh bye!

 

Why did they change the style in winter? It should have been spring or summer not drab late winter.  Why didn't they work on the sets more? They could have done what the old  live soaps did...which was have semi permanent sets like them all boxed up in a row with a camera down the middle they would just move on a track to the next scene. If live soaps in the 60s could do it there is no reason why this had to look so much like crap.  And that theme song!!!

 

Long must have freaked Rauch out..."This good looking, but kinda old dame...has a mouth on her!?!?!"

Edited by Mitch
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